REPORTAGE. In Moscow, the Victory Museum now has a room devoted to “ordinary Nazism” in Ukraine

No place more than the Victory Museum in Moscow allows us to understand the omnipresence of the memory of the Second World War in Russia, “the great patriotic war” which caused 27 million deaths in the USSR. Dozens of primary school classes visit this huge 110,000 square meter space every day. In the corridors we meet them, wearing the caps of soldiers walking in step or playing war with their guide: “I’m going to scout to check that the way is clear. If they kill me, you will avenge me, friends”launches one of these speakers in a half-playful, half-mysterious voice, eliciting a mixture of laughter and cries from the children.

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On the ground floor, rooms reconstruct the main battles of the war, while a large exhibition devoted to “historical truth” brings together many archival pieces and documents. You have to go up to the first floor to access the new room entitled “Ordinary Nazism”. Inaugurated in early May 2022, it recounts the supposed revival of Nazism in Ukraine, a phenomenon that the Russian power invokes to justify its operation of “denazification”. This exhibition space is prohibited for at least 18 years old, because of the violence of certain images that can be seen there. But we still come across children with their parents, in the distressing soundscape of a metronome ticking off the seconds sometimes interspersed with a bell tolling the death knell.

In the middle of the room sits a swing with children’s stuffed animals. On the ceiling are hung small cherubs on which are inscribed the names of children and their ages. No panel explains the meaning of this presentation. According to the Meduza media (banned in Russia), these are the names of child victims of the war in the Donbass, which appeared on websites close to the separatists.

In general, the exhibition contains few explanatory elements. A Ukrainian flag thus rubs shoulders with a cup decorated with a swastika in a window without anyone knowing why these two objects were thus brought together. Other videos show images of great violence a priori filmed recently in Ukraine where we see soldiers being executed. Here again, no comment comes to specify the context. A video ends with a hijacking of the Nazi anthem,”Ukraine uber gos” (“Ukraine above all”). So many images that struck Larissa, who had come from Siberia to spend a few days in Moscow. She took the opportunity to visit the museum and she said she was impressed: “It is very moving, explains this forties. We see how our people survived Nazism or died of it. And also the comparison with what is happening in Ukraine today where Nazism is thriving. And I don’t want that.“

The exhibition also returns to the Nuremberg trials and the figure of Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist who collaborated with the Nazi occupier at the start of the war. The current Ukrainian leaders are sometimes described as “banderists” by the Russian authorities.

Andrei, another visitor comes out convinced that the current Ukrainian leaders are the heirs of these nationalists: “I think Russia has a mission in the world. History shows that no country other than us is ready for such sacrifices. And there, everything is obvious, this is further proof. I don’t think anyone should doubt that. We will be victorious. Fascism will be defeated, this time again.“